Switzerland Burns Snowmen To Celebrate Spring

Burn, Snowman! Burn!

Switzerland is a country known for holey cheese, knives that double as nail clippers and bottle openers, and a great place to store artwork pilfered by the Nazis.

It's also a bad place to be a snowman -- at least in Zurich, around the third Monday of April.

That's when citizens of the Swiss city hold Sechseläuten, a festival that is sort of like Groundhog Day, except more gruesome. At least for a man made of snow. The event climaxes when a figure of a snowman is filled with explosives and lit on fire to celebrate the end of winter.

According to tradition, if the snowman's head explodes within 12 minutes, the summer will be warm and sunny.

On Monday, the snowman needed 20 minutes and 39 second to go kablooey, so the summer could be cold and grey, BigNewsNetwork.com reports.

burn snowman burn

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